America’s oldest bank spends billions on tech

At America’s oldest bank, 134 new workers don’t sleep or take sick days. They don’t even have names.

They’re what BNY calls “digital employees.” They work side by side with humans. They have unique roles and are evaluated by how well they do them. Some of their jobs were done by people last year.

“The digital employee works 24/7, which is obviously very different to our human counterparts,” said Rachel Lewis, who oversees nine digital employees in addition to thousands of humans as head of payment operations for BNY.  “It’s really focused on very specific repetitive tasks that allow our human employees to do much more human, intense, interesting-type roles.”

BNY employs 48,100 humans, down from about 53,400 in 2023, according to a recent earnings presentation. CFO Dermot McDonogh was asked on the firm’s fourth-quarter analyst call last month what the 134 digital employees mean for cost savings at the firm. 

“Our head count has trended down a little bit, but that’s not really anything to do with AI yet,” McDonogh said. “We talk about, internally, AI is unlocking capacity. We don’t think about it in the narrow definition of efficiency. It’s all about growing with clients, increasing revenues and optimizing the potential for our employees.” 

Across Wall Street, analysts and investors are starting to ask more questions about how the industry’s expenses on AI will translate into higher efficiencies and greater returns. BNY spent $3.8 billion on technology in 2025, or about 19% of its revenue. That’s the highest proportion among its large-bank peers, according to data collated by CNBC.

“There’s an AI arms race. The banks are part of that, said Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo. “But you don’t define success by who spends the most. You define success by who has the best results.”

“It’s a lot of ‘spraying and praying’ when it comes to spending on tech, generally,” he said. 

However, BNY has been identified as one of the companies that could see the biggest benefits from AI. Goldman Sachs’ research team screened the Russell 1000 for potential productivity improvements, based on labor costs and wage exposure to AI automation. The firm ranked BNY toward the top of that list, saying the bank could see a potential 19% boost to earnings per share. 

But in several conversations CNBC had with executives at BNY, they’ve been steadfast that the multitude of technology investments won’t come at the expense of human employees.

“I wouldn’t think about it that way,” said Michelle O’Reilly, BNY global head of talent. “I would think about it more as unlocking that productivity – enabling all employees to be productive.”

While the company is building more digital employees, it’s also upskilling the human ones. Shortly after ChatGPT was released in late 2022, BNY set up its AI Hub. 

“That’s when we really doubled down and realized that this would be transformational for…